Friday, 29 May 2020

After releasing the poetic album 'No Directions' (see OUW004 - OJP041), the Japanese duo Evoke returns with this mini album.

'Disperse' was composed as a response to the Nuclear Plant Accident that happened at Fukushima in March 11, 2011. Some of the field recording samples were provided by Prof. Koji NAGAHATA from Fukushima University who has been recording the soundscapes of Fukushima City after 3/11/2011. The text was written by Wataru Iwata and read by Yukiko Hiranuma.Cris Ubermannthen realised a beautiful video based on the track.

Friday, 22 May 2020

1983, the year of the DX-7! 1983, the year of National Lampoon's Vacation! 1983, the year IBM releases the IBM PC XT! 1983, the year Harrods was bombed! 1983, the year Space Shuttle Challenger launched her maiden flight. 1983, the year of Tootsie! 1983: the year a 5.2 earthquake hits central New York! 1983, the year the US unemployment rises to 12 million! 1983, the year Fraggle Rock premieres during January of 1983 on HBO! 1983, the year the video game Mario Bros. was first released! 2020, the year Pierre Vervloesem releases his album 1983!Another masterpiece from Pierre and already his 5th for this year! 3 long tracks to go up your head and move in all directions!See also his 2 series here and here!Digital release on the 22nd of May 2020.Track listing:1: Natural Computer Music - 25,02m2: Five Things to Forget - 16,46m3: Procrasti Nation - 9,30m

Monday, 18 May 2020

Amal Harbaoui and Lucio Cavallari are MAMA HOPE.They formed in Italy the contemporary nu-r&B group, influenced by a far reaching array of musical genres and styles.Amal derives her name from her Tunisian descent, her Arabic name means ‘Hope’.Lucio, all-round artist, once worked as a chef in the tropical rainforest of Costa Rica. Wildlife, shamans and the jungle lifestyle impacts the way Lucio now lives in the present. Cooking every day the ‘best pasta ever’ earned him the surname of Lucio Mama. Just as you can trust a good cook, the music food of MAMA HOPE embraces you like a family recipe book. MAMA HOPE has an important meaning: Make-believe-love is real love, the fusion between maternal love and hope that produces further altruism.MAMA HOPE sounds float through passages and ambient landscapes, dreamlike and full of electrical stimuli. Amal's vocals double, or return in a single deep dimension that touches your soul and heart.Their musical influences are manifold and these are some of their artists to whom they refer: Hindi Zahra, Selah Sue, Y’Akoto, Fiona Apple, Miss Li, Liz Green and Erykah Badu.With this first mini album, they offer you 7 profond and intense songs to excite your soul and emotions! Enjoy!

Amal and Lucio

A video for Space Cake:

All music written by Lucio Mama except 'A Hope' written with Riccardo Belluto Leccese.Lyrics: Amal Hope, Lucio Mama expect When Man enters Woman by Anne Sexton.

Friday, 15 May 2020

Pulse Convention (see also the beautiful OJP038 'Simultaneous Spontaneity) reunited for this live concert at Tokyo Shibuya The Gate on the 1st of November 2019.

All the tracks were improvised and show as always their typical cinematic atmospheric sound. Powerful at times or quiet at others, mixing contemporary electric keyboards, electronics effects on saxes while the rhythmic duo of contrabass and drums adding the spices of natural jazz, 'At the Gate' captives this moment where the band is playing like coming out of a single brain...Plain magic! Enjoy!

Friday, 8 May 2020

Yanqin Gao (see also OUC001 Prelude) has been self involved in a lot of artistic activities such as painting, collage, creating and assembling by hand musical instruments and also composing music for short movies. She currently lives in Shanghai.This is a compilation of the pieces she composed for those movies. The four instrumental ones were composed in advance by virtue of the stories of the films. They are describing mysterious and nostalgia feelings about tracking people in the past. After all, the soundtracks became new stories parallel to the visual parts. The music is a mix of contemporary classical and romantic music from the beginning of the 20th century, quite melancholic and with a small Asian vibe.The fifth dreamy song was written for a dramatic moment when Yanqin happened to see an old lover after they separated for ten years. They had a cup of coffee but didn’t talk too much. The song is more like a dialogue between Yanqin and a younger self. The song is quite a departure from Yanqin only instrumental songs and her warm but quiet voice leaves again a very melancholic and dreamy atmosphere, though not a sad one for sure.4 tracks of contemporary classical and a 'pop' song! Enjoy!

Friday, 1 May 2020

Xtof Calis is the moniker of Belgian musician and composer Christophe Calis (°1971, Ypres), who resides in Brussels, at the edge of the Sonian Forest. His solo career started after he left the Belgian trip hop band Sutrastore of which he was a founding member and the main songwriter. Xtof Calis has also composed the music for the tv-documentary “Rien n’est pardonné” (2017).As a philosophy student Calis discovered the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. This inspired him to develop the concept of ‘devenir-son’, ‘becoming-sound’ and to explore how sound can territorialize the body. With the aid of laptop, synthesizers and guitar, Calis' sound-sculptures create contemplative and meditative affects in a unique style of ambient music, marked by an experimental and glitchy edge

Xtof - Photo by Pedro Bruneel

About the album:"After I finished ‘Actif et réactif’ (2019) I forwarded my album to Jo Bogaert, one of the Belgian pioneers in electronic music. The album referred to a book by Gilles Deleuze, ‘Nietzsche et la philosophie’. Bogaert was enthusiastic about the album and suggested that my next one could be about another book by Deleuze, namely ‘Spinoza et le problème de l’expression’. As I was already intrigued by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza and in particular by his description of the soul as ‘what the body can do’, Deleuzes book inspired me. As a tribute to both, Deleuze and Spinoza, I titled this new album after the book and named each track after one of the chapters. The pieces - for a large part improvised- continue to explore the concept of sound-becoming. Sound-becoming encouraged me to let go of my thinking mind and fill the space of my home studio with an adventurous multiverse of sound. It is a fundamental part of my personal quest for stylistic endeavours that bring joy and courage in a post-capitalistic society. "Composing, playing, recording and mixing by Xtof Calis.Digital release on the 1st of May 2020.Track listing:1: Rôle et importance de l’expression2: Les triades de la substance3: Le parallélisme et l’immanence4: Théorie du mode fini5: Théorie de l’expression chez Leibniz et chez Spinoza

About Off

Off is a Belgian based label founded by Alain Lefebvre in 2007.
If you want to download, click on any Bandcamp buttons in the 'Listen and download' page. For the rest, just click on the name of the provider you want to buy from in each Believe player under the album you want to download.
If you want the real thing, you will find a BUY button linked to Paypal at the end of each cd presentation. You can also go on the Catalogue page and click on the cd you want to discover. You will find again the BUY button at the bottom of the page. Or go on the Shop page then just go to paypal.com and order at:
order@stilll.org , just leave a comment with which cds you want.